This year I've decided to sketch many of The Great Holy Men and Women of the Church. Come along with me on this journey as we get to know our elder brothers and sisters in faith.

"And therefore we also having so great a cloud of witnesses over our head, laying aside every weight and sin which surrounds us, let us run by patience to the fight proposed to us," Heb 12:1

Birth of the Virgin Mary

September 8

Birth of the Virgin Mary

This feast, like the Assumption of Mary, originated in Jerusalem. It began in the fifth century as the feast of the Cathedral of Saint Anna. The original church built, in the fifth century was a Marian basilica erected on the spot known as the shepherd’s field and thought to have been the home of Mary’s parents. In the seventh century, the feast was celebrated by the Palestinian Christians as the feast of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In the West the Feast began to be kept toward the end of the 7th century, brought there by Byzantine monks.